


What Happened Before

by MoonMargaret



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonMargaret/pseuds/MoonMargaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic is legal and, just as it seemed that a time of peace was to settle in Camelot, Arthur receives a mysterious summons that he cannot refuse. Leaving Camelot in the care of his queen and his knights, he and Merlin leave, facing foes old and new, and reforging a friendship still on the mend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue:  A Waiting Game

Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.  
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She waited.

Waiting didn't usually bother her. She'd been in hiding for so long that she almost could not remember her life before. Had she ever truly had one? She just remembered…waiting. Long periods of waiting with short and intense bursts of action that left her exhilarated and alive and awake and enough to keep her from going insane from the waiting as it all started over again. She had to be patient. Impatience led to recklessness and recklessness led to death and defeat. She'd learned that lesson the hard way. Irresponsibility was unacceptable to the hunted.

So she waited and she kept waiting, as she always did.

Although it was worse this time, and she thought that she knew why. She'd sent off her letter more than a week ago, and she knew perfectly well that it would probably be another week until its addressee received it. Plus, for all she knew, it would be a week before he would have the presence of mind to open it. And then the journey…Camelot had the fastest and strongest horses in the five kingdoms. It would still take him a fortnight—at least—to meander his way to the designated meeting place. It wasn't as though it was exactly recorded on every map ever drawn. And there was the likelihood that he hadn't come alone, no matter how clearly she expressed the necessity of that term. No, he wouldn't come alone, but she wasn't sure whether that would hasten his journey or slow him down. She only hoped that he had the sense to travel without a flock of knights or a retinue or anything equally foolish. Speed was of the utmost importance, and she thought that she'd expressed that well enough.

Which is why it had caused her all but physical pain when she'd had to send off that oh-so-important scroll to the king of Camelot via messenger, no magic. He had insisted on that. And, as had become the routine as of late, he hadn't told her why. The very first time that he asked her to do something rather risky without explaining the reasoning behind the request, she had been appalled. A lad younger than herself, displaying no magic, sitting and giving orders!

Now, months later, things were different. She would have felt rather pathetic obeying the orders of a lad younger than herself who displayed no magic if it were not for the…sinister darkness that somehow shone out from his eyes. He didn't need to ask politely to give impressive demonstrations of magic. She knew that he had it and she knew that he had more than she did and so she did as she was told.

A fact which frightened her more than almost anything else ever had. She had thought that she was a figure more than capable of taking over—or at least, taking out Camelot, the kingdom that had initiated the magical persecution that had spread out into all of the others—but then, they had found each other. Or had he sought her out? That was another question that he'd refused to answer her. She only wondered, rather hopefully, whether or not he was more powerful than the mysterious Emrys who haunted her dreams and, increasingly, her days.

She still did not know which of the two she was hoping for.

Emrys…how could a name somehow be so threatening to her? She supposed that it would have been helpful if any of the others of her kind that she had encountered in her travels had had any more information about the sorcerer than she did. But no one knew anything. Just that there was Emrys and, depending on the loyalties of each particular informant, a man dreamt of or dreaded, or even considered a legend never to be realized. Of course, she'd had the impression from every Druid that she'd met that, frustratingly, they all somehow knew. It wasn't anything that they said—whenever she got one to talk to her, he or she usually just said that "Emrys is Emrys, and he is everything that you are not" or that "Emrys is Emrys, and he is the light to your darkness" or, most frighteningly, "Emrys is Emrys, and he is the darkness to your light." She'd wondered briefly if perhaps he was Emrys, the young man barely past boyhood beside whom she know stood with fearful loyalty, but she hadn't dared to ask. It felt almost inconceivable that he could be the man of the legends and, if he was, every fiber of her being did not want to know.

Of course, in the better part of the past year, rumors as to a possible identity of Emrys had been flying about, and they all pointed to the same person. Merlin, they called him. From the stories that she had heard, he had still been manservant to King Arthur when he'd been caught doing magic and later exiled, after a lengthy imprisonment. Depending on the source, she'd heard that he'd been kept in the dungeons for a briefly as a week to as lengthily as a year. Many of the sources seemed to agree, however, that Merlin was a likely candidate. She hadn't believed it for an instant. Even if he was a sorcerer, how powerful could he have been that he was able to be imprisoned and then forced out of a kingdom by a mere man? She could have escaped from a cell in minutes, and she had to concede that Emrys—if he was real—was more powerful than she. If Emrys was real, he was not a man whom any cell could contain or any king could exile.

Others had argued with her, not knowing who she was. Otherwise, would they have dared? So they argued. They said that he must have some significant powers if he was able to remain at the side of a magic-paranoid monarch for nearly a decade without being caught, that there had to be some sort of powerful enchantment used on the king that he had chosen to exile the sorcerer rather than execute him, as the laws of Camelot had dictated. She just couldn't accept that. From the less biased reports that she'd heard, she felt that it was far more likely that King Arthur was an idiot—if admittedly brave—and therefore not difficult to fool and that he had too weak a stomach to execute a former servant, especially if that servant didn't seem so powerful that he was any real threat to his lands. Merlin the manservant as legendary Emrys? Wherever and whoever the real Emrys was, she imagined that he had to be insulted by the idea.

But he did not seem to share her borderline obsession with the true identity of Emrys. She had decided not to let that bother her; after all, it was almost a fad amongst what few clumps of open magic-users could be found to speculate about the identity. It was just another expression of blind hope, and if there was one thing that she had learned from him, it was that "hope" was just another word that the lazy used for "imagination."

Besides, he was awfully associated with the Druids. Perhaps he already knew.

It wasn't like he would tell her if he did. The looks of silent disdain that he threw in her direction whenever she began to even think of Emrys in his presence were enough to chill her to the bone. She had to struggle, now, to conceal her thoughts. It seemed to be working. It usually left her strangely exhausted, but she felt like she was building up a tolerance.

And it was an honor to be his right-hand woman. If she had to suffer headaches every once in a while, so be it. Even if she was, at this point, far more interested in solving the mystery of Emrys than she was of any particularly destructive mischief, she was more than willing to help him. After all, hadn't her fleeting glimpses of and her brief encounter with Emrys shown her that the sorcerer had some strangely vested interest in Camelot? Perhaps his plan would be enough to bring Emrys out of the woodwork, to reveal himself. Perhaps Emrys would even be the one that Arthur would bring with him.

Probably not, though. One of the few things that he had told her before she had so reluctantly handed the scroll bearing the summons off to a messenger—a messenger!—was that the king's traveling companion was more likely to be a manservant, past or present. From the way that his eyes had so strangely shone when he'd spoken thusly, she'd had the impression that he was hoping for the "past" of the two menservants. She figured that this was because, if the king was to bring any magical assistance, it was better for it to be that Merlin of his than anyone else more powerful. Besides, one of the few ideas that nearly everyone that she had spoken to had agreed upon was that the king and his pet sorcerer were strangely attached to each other in what amounted to one of the most unlikely friendships in the five kingdoms. That was good. Affection was a weakness.

That was probably why he had seemed so strangely satisfied. She had envied him that; how could he have already found any satisfaction before anything had started? They were waiting. Even he hadn't bothered starting in earnest on any of their carefully planned preparations yet. Considering the travel time of the messenger and then the travel time of the king—assuming that he would come—it would be at least a month before he and anyone whom he had decided to drag along with him would have found their way to where they would be waiting.

She did wonder if he would come. It was one of the thoughts that she strived her hardest to conceal from him, but she wondered. Would the king suspect a trap? It would be hard not to. The whole thing stank of trickery. She herself had been astounded when he had told her that he meant exactly every word that he had dictated to her, himself unable to read or write any script that was not inked in such beautiful calligraphy on what few scrolls that he carried and that she had not been permitted to try to read, save for what few glances she'd been able to steal whenever he'd pored over them. Whether they were spells or the plan written or something that had drawn him out of his own hiding and initiated the whole plot, she did not know. And she tried not to wonder.

But she was afraid. She was afraid that the king wouldn't come, that the reasons written to him wouldn't be enough, that he'd be so wary of a trap that he wouldn't bother taking the risk of springing it, not with no one left in Camelot but a peasant queen and no heir; she was afraid that they wouldn't get the support from the others of their kind as they might have before the king had apparently gone through with his plan the legalize magic in Camelot; she was afraid that Emrys would come and that he would not be able to defeat him; she was afraid that Emrys would come and he, in fact, would be able to defeat him; she was afraid that the contacts that Merlin had made during his months of exile, the magical folk most ardent in their beliefs that the errant manservant was truly Emrys, would rise up in his defense, the passion of their hopes being more than sufficient to flock to his metaphorical banners, even if he was not the intended target of the whole plan and if he was just a plain old average sorcerer, as she steadfastly believed; that the king would leave behind a queen with child and ruin everything before it had even begun; that he would turn on her before doing as he had promised her, just as she had turned on so many others before; that it would all be for naught and all of her waiting would have been useless and have led to nothing and that she would start to hope and then it would all be over for her.

Suddenly, he entered the room, soundlessly and startlingly treading upon the broken rocks that littered the stone floor beneath them, the dappling sunshine that shone through the holes in the roof playing across his face in a peculiarly lovely vision. Unsurprisingly, he did not speak. So she raised her eyes to his, repressed the familiar shudder that was a mix of respectful awe and dread that there was too much in this boy than there should have been in anyone, and she closed her mind and smiled.

And she kept waiting.

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	2. A First For Everything

Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.  
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Arthur was behaving strangely.

Well, at least, in Merlin's opinion, Arthur was behaving strangely. He couldn't say whether or not Arthur agreed on the matter; when Merlin had laughingly made the accusation, shouting over the wind that enveloped them, cold and fierce and piercing to the bone in a deliciously exhilarating sensation, Arthur hadn't deigned to answer. He had just tightened his grip on the uneven surface beneath his fingers and maintained the expression of barely-contained terror, eyes streaming from a combination of the wind and what was, in Merlin's opinion, a rather irrational refusal to blink, knuckles white from the insistence of his grasp, body so needlessly tight and rigid that Merlin was sure that he would be incredibly sore by the time that they were to stop and dismount for the night. The last that Arthur had spoken had been hours before, when he had shouted at Merlin that, if people were meant to fly, they would have been born with wings, and that this was a stupid idea and they should probably turn back immediately.

Now that he thought about it, Arthur probably thought that, by the relative nonchalance with which Merlin had been viewing their travels thus far, Merlin was the one who was behaving strangely.

But honestly, thought Merlin defensively. What did Arthur think riding on a dragon was going to be like? They hadn't exactly had any dragon-sized saddles available and, as he had informed Arthur firmly, he would not have been presumptive enough to propose attaching one to Aithusa. There was such a thing as manners! When Merlin tried to instill in him a bit of empathy by asking how he would feel if Aithusa approached him and proposed putting a saddle on his back, Arthur had just glared and tried to find a tighter handhold on the scaly skin of the dragon before he took flight.

Granted, Merlin had informed a hesitant Arthur that riding a dragon was more or less the same as riding a horse, but he felt that it was entirely Arthur's fault that he hadn't asked Merlin to specify exactly what he meant by "more or less."

Aithusa hadn't made things any easier, to the extent that an exasperated Merlin had had to ask Aithusa whether or not adolescent dragons were always as moody as adolescent humans before he became somewhat begrudgingly friendly once more. Merlin had made the mistake of informing Arthur that dragons were like horses in that they could smell fear, inventing whatever dragon facts suited him, so long as they hastened Arthur's willingness to climb up on the dragon's back. Aithusa had then taken offense, both at the implication that he was interchangeable with a horse and the idea that Arthur was afraid of him. During their brief interactions prior to the beginning of this particular adventure, Arthur and Aithusa had seemed at the very least to tolerate each other. Aithusa was so young that he did not bear the same admittedly justified grudges against Pendragons as did Kilgarrah, and Merlin suspected that Aithusa's pale coloration had led Arthur to appreciate him as another blond. For Arthur to suddenly become frightened of him was apparently a mortal insult to Aithusa. Merlin still wasn't sure whether he ought to be entertained or exasperated by the whole situation.

Sparing another glance at the king who was determined not to show any fear, Merlin saw that his face was nearly as white as Aithusa's skin, and Merlin had to suspect that what color that remained in his cheeks was a ruddiness resultant from the wind against their skin rather than any heartiness of spirit. He began to think that maybe it would be a good idea for them to take to the ground for the day.

But it wasn't that good of an idea. The sky was barely even beginning to darken and, while Merlin admitted that spending the better part of a day on the back of a dragon could be something of a shock to anyone, he didn't think that they should be wasting any time, not when there was still light enough for them to carry on and when Aithusa still had the stamina to fly on without rest or sustenance or reassurance that he was far more fun a conversationalist than a horse. And he and Arthur had agreed before almost anything else that speed was of the utmost importance. After all, they weren't exactly flying across the kingdom on the back of a dragon for the fun of it. They needed speed and stealth and surprise and, while dragons weren't always the most subtle of creatures, most people preferred to dismiss as imagined any dragon sightings rather than consider them valid. And dragons were much faster than horses. Besides, it seemed that few people even knew that there really was a large white dragon flying about the lands. Kilgarrah was meant to have been the last of his kind.

Merlin sighed as best he could against the rush of air over his face. He supposed that he ought to consider himself lucky that he enjoyed dragon rides. The freedom and danger and daring of it gave him a comfortable and pleasant sort of buzz throughout his body that generally allowed him to at the very least stifle the negative thoughts that usually led to his hasty flights. Arthur didn't have the luxury, and Merlin had the impression that Arthur was alternating between a painful awareness of what was happening in front of him and the distant knowledge of what he was flying toward and what he was flying away from and how he had gone about doing them both.

Merlin personally preferred thinking about what they were flying toward rather than what they were flying from. They were flying toward something that required action and movement and decision and magic and might and cleverness and it was all a puzzle to be worked out and they would, damn it, or they would die trying, satisfied for having perished in the attempt, at least.

But what they were flying away from? That was a queen and a throne and friends and duty and responsibility and everyone who loved them and everyone who would be mad and sad and scared and supportive all at the same time when they found out what the two of them had done and that was home and where they were needed most and where they most wanted to be, now when they had been so very close to peace. Balance had been so close…magical and non-magical, together in legality, if not yet entirely in the hearts of every citizen of Camelot. They had been so close…

But then the letter had come. Merlin glowered into the sunset, the warmth of the sun on his cheeks a welcome change as he tried not to dwell on what had driven them from the comfort of the settling stillness in Camelot, out into the uncertainties that they were facing. That damn scroll…

He supposed that he ought to give some credit to the author. In just a few sentences, both Arthur and Merlin had been ready and determined to carry out the terms specified in the ink. There had been no thought or consideration. They were leaving. They agreed on that much.

What troubled Merlin most, however, was that he knew perfectly well that they did not agree on who had sent the summons. There had been no signature or identifying seal, but that hadn't mattered. The content required no claimant to persuade them to this new quest. Merlin knew who Arthur thought had sent it, and they hadn't had a particularly large amount of time for discussion, so Merlin hadn't bothered to tell him that he had his own ideas.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Arthur. He did, with his whole life and everything in it. It was just that he was not sure that he trusted Arthur's judgment at the time. Arthur had taken one look at the unsettling content and convinced himself that he recognized the hand. Merlin had wanted to tell him that he was confused, that he was seeking the familiar in what was not, that he saw a dozen different styles of handwriting every day, from every corner of the five kingdoms, that there was no way that anyone's writing could be so specific that he'd know it immediately. It was just…unlikely. But once Arthur made up his mind about something and there was no proof to the contrary…well, it would have been one long dragon ride if Merlin had shared his own theory before he had any time to sort out his thoughts.

It wasn't a theory, though, not really. Just a gut feeling. An instinct. A fear that it was all feeling far too familiar for comfort. He may not have received any epiphanies from the script as had Arthur, but the whole scenario just seemed like something that she would have designed. He knew that he didn't exactly have a plethora of experience of shady dealings with her, but he knew enough to guess and estimate and figure and it all was adding up to her and it all made so much sense that it seemed almost more potent than what didn't make any sense.

He could still see her, if he closed his eyes and thought hard and nourished the flame that always began to burn in his chest when he thought of the things that she had done, to him, to those whom he loved, to herself, to a world that had wronged her that she sought to fix by wronging it tenfold. Besides, it hadn't been so long ago that they'd been face to face. So much had happened since then that it seemed decades ago, but it was so fresh in his memory whenever he chose to remember their last encounter...

Could it be her, though? She was dead. She had to be. He'd seen it. Hadn't he? She had died, and he spent a fair amount of time telling himself that it was more her doing than it was his. But he had seen enough in the years since he had first come to Camelot and begun exploring his magic, since his exile and his travels farther into the world of magic than he'd imagined could possibly exist, since everything that happened once seemed to happen twice and thrice and all over again, since what was beginning to feel like forever…he knew now that it was hard to judge a man dead without a body in front of him.

Or a woman.

It could be her. It sounded like her. The letter spoke of things—facts, ideas, fears, flaws—that Merlin was sure were hardly public knowledge. She had her crystal, didn't she? He had always assumed that she'd had one of her own, hidden away somewhere. She could see things from afar, prying into the private sadnesses and trials of others, safe leagues and leagues away. How else could she know what Arthur was so afraid of? How else could she have known what exact words could draw him away from the safety of his rightful place on the throne? How else could she have known that Merlin would be the first to unroll the scroll, the contents of which may just have well been addressed to him rather than Arthur? How else could she have known that one of the pressures of being king and being queen had nothing to do with matters of state and rather with matters of the heart and the body and perfect opposites that were perfect matches?

If anyone could do it, Merlin thought, she could. Well, he probably could do it as well, but he had told her long ago that he would never choose to ally himself with magic such as hers. Besides, this was truly a woman's magic. He could not imagine that any man would be so cruel or so fundamentally unjust as to be capable of taking away or granting or altering this so basic of an ability away from a woman, especially one such as Guinevere.

One such as a queen.

A queen…

Merlin closed his eyes and rested his forehead down against the hard scales of the dragon upon which he flew. The rough skin was strangely comfortable to him, and he found a peace in the warmth of the dragon below him that contrasted so sharply with the cold of the wind at his back. Eyes closed, it was as peaceful a sensation as was attainable at this height.

Peace…

Yes, it was her. Revenge against the father by way of the son, violation of a new queen as parallel to the interference on the previous that had started so much. She could not unpurge what had been purged, she could not absolve the shame that would not doubt haunt the persecuted, no matter what freedoms they were granted by law, she could not bring back the dragons or reforge sacred artifacts of her faith or heal the rifts rent by pain and sorrow and blame. But she could see Uther where there was only Arthur, and what happened before could happen again.

And what did it matter if he thought her dead? From what he remembered, it wouldn't be the first time that she had been given up for dead and then rediscovered. She may have made her reappearance with a new face and a new voice and a new initiative, but it was her. And what meant that she could not do it again? Powerful as he was, he still knew so little about the lines that blurred between life and death. He didn't want to know. Every time that he tried to interfere, someone suffered. But she knew. She'd held the Cup of Life in her own hands. He'd seen it. She knew magic that he never dreamed of seeking.

It could be her.

Gods help them all, it could be her.

But maybe Arthur was right. After all, if anyone alive were to recognize the hand of his prime suspect, it would be Arthur. Maybe Merlin was just becoming imaginative and overexcited and his mind had just run away from him from the first moment that he read the scroll that threatened the king via the queen via within. Hell, for all he knew, maybe neither he nor Arthur were correct, and this was just another sorceress who had it in for Arthur and they were making a big deal out of nothing and it would cost them no more than a few gray hairs oft-denied and deeply buried within the blond of the king and another magical toss-into-the-fireplace by Merlin. And hell, maybe it wasn't even a woman.

It didn't matter, he told himself, opening his eyes and squinting into the brilliant orange and purple of the setting sun, appearing only inches beyond his fingertips, within his grasp if he chose to stretch for it. They would find whoever it was, man or woman, old foe or new enemy, young or aged. He and Arthur would find whoever it was that dared threaten something so dear to both of them, so fundamentally important in a way that was deeper than any person or any object or any ability, and they would see that whoever it was would not be in much of a way to make any future threats on anyone. They would take care of this problem, and it would all be okay, because Guinevere was a good queen and she could manage in Arthur's absence, once she decided whether or not she would issue a warrant for their heads in retaliation for their having fled the castle without any forewarning. Gwaine would help, he knew. Arthur hadn't been happy when Merlin confessed that he'd told Gwaine the basics of their plan and left the unsigned scroll with him rather than leaving in all in a message for Guinevere to stumble upon later, but he had no regrets. He'd felt as though someone ought to know that they were leaving. Leaving under utter secrecy felt as though they were sneaking out, and that just didn't feel right. He was not ashamed of what they were off to do, and Gwaine was one of the two men that he trusted most in the world. He would help Guinevere as best as he could, and Camelot would be in fine hands if they didn't return.

Until they returned.

It didn't matter, thought Merlin brusquely to himself. Whether they did or didn't was not the point of their quest. All that mattered was that they succeeded.

Plus, they had a dragon.

Merlin lifted his hands off of Aithusa's back and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Merlin had no doubt that, if Arthur had possessed the nerve, he would have turned to glare at Merlin for the ease with which he conducted himself on the dragon. But Arthur was still motionless, jaw set and eyes streaming and knuckles white, his figure severe but somehow impressive as they flew through the air, the final rays of the day's sunshine gleaming off of his golden hair. King Arthur…

Merlin leant forward and whispered a few words into Aithusa's ear. The wind was still rushing over him with such pounding ferocity that he could not hear himself speak, but he had no doubt that Aithusa had understood. His belief was confirmed seconds later when the magnificent white wings of the young dragon dipped, and the body angled downward, ever so slightly, and they began a slow descent to the land below.

Merlin had specifically instructed Aithusa to take it slowly on this first descent—going downward on a dragon's back was generally far more terrifying than going up, and he didn't want to push Arthur too far on his first day. Still, the minute adjustment of Aithusa's wings that first moment shook Arthur to his core, as far as Merlin could tell. His eyes were flitting back at forth and, for the first time in hours, he spoke. Fortunately, Aithusa had slowed his pace significantly, and Merlin was able to hear quite clearly what Arthur was saying.

"Merlin, what the hell is he doing?"

Merlin wished that he had something that he could throw at Arthur, just for the fun of it.

"Landing!"

The incredulity dripped from Arthur's rather strained voice. "Does he need to plummet down like his wings just snapped off?"

Merlin glanced downward at the landscape below them, becoming larger as they moved.

Slowly becoming larger.

Very slowly.

Merlin looked back at Arthur, raising his eyebrows, knowing perfectly well that there was no way that Arthur would be able to see the expression, but enjoying being contrary just for the sake of it. "I hope that you don't think that this is the fastest that he can go. If you do, just wait until we get to some mountains. Aithusa seems to enjoy his sheer drops."

Arthur either didn't notice or did not care to acknowledge Merlin's implication. "Why are we going down?"

"Are you enjoying yourself that much, Arthur?"

Arthur actually turned enough to meet Merlin's gaze, and Merlin understood how serious he was. "I mean it, Merlin! We should keep going. The sooner we get there, the more likely we'll catch them off guard, the sooner we take care of this."

"We can't go all night, Arthur," responded Merlin, patient in his acceptance of Arthur's anxiety.

"Why not? You and me, we'll live. And dragons can fly in the dark, can't they? I mean, they don't have to dodge trees or ditches or anything like horses. How hard could it be?"

Aithusa took a sudden deep dip to the right, and Arthur swore at the top of his lungs, scrambling to tighten his grip to the dragon with such frenzy that he almost knocked himself off in the effort. Merlin smiled. Arthur was learning the lesson that he'd learned on his first dragon flight: insult the dragon, and the flight becomes a whole lot less predictable.

Once Arthur's breathing slowed once more and Merlin stopped smiling at the idea that he finally found Arthur's irrationally crippling fear, he answered Arthur's question.

"Aithusa needs food and water and sleep, same as we do. We'll camp for the night and start again in the morning, and you should probably say thank you to Aithusa for not knocking you off of his back before you fall asleep."

Arthur shook his head, growing stubborn. "Merlin, we should keep—"

Merlin shook his head and cut him off. "Feel free to carry on alone on foot, Arthur! I'm staying in one place and eating and sleeping and not going anywhere until dawn. And I'm keeping the dragon!"

Arthur scowled and remained silent for a few moments. "I liked it better when I was the knight and you were the manservant."

Merlin laughed. "I'm sure that you did. Stretch out those arms, Arthur! I hope that you're ready to gather some firewood and cook some dinner!"

Arthur scowled for a moment longer, then laughed, almost looking surprised as he did so.

Merlin smiled. "The altitude's getting to you, Arthur. Just wait, I'll have you singing tavern songs before the night's over."

Arthur kept smiling, and Merlin was pleased that Arthur seemed to be coping well enough, although he did have to concede that some of the giddiness probably was due to the thinness of the air at the height at which they'd been flying for most of the day.

"You will not," Arthur unnecessarily shouted in response, and Merlin winced. Everything that would have been inaudible a few minutes previously was very much comprehensible now that Aithusa's wings were not beating so furiously to their sides and the air was not rushing past their ears so deafeningly.

So, naturally, Merlin shouted, at the top of his lungs, right back. "I will so!"

In his turn, Arthur flinched at the noise, Merlin noticed in rather inappropriate satisfaction. He had deliberately leaned closer to Arthur's ear to yell.

"Will not!" Arthur responded maturely, his voice thankfully more controlled.

"Will so," Merlin countered.

"You're wrong, Merlin," said Arthur, adopting his lofty voice and that superior expression that took so much of his focus that he did not notice how Merlin's eyes grew distant as his mind flew back to the contemplations that had occupied his mind as the sun had set, about the how and the why and the what and the who…Was he wrong?

"I hope you're right, Arthur," said Merlin. "I really hope you're right."

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Thank you for reading! Reviews are always very appreciated.


	3. An Unexpected Alliance

Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

She sat, motionless.

What else was there to do? There was nothing, absolutely nothing in her power that could change anything that was worth changing at that moment. She was the bloody queen of Camelot, and yet it sometimes seemed as though she was the last person to find out anything important that went on in the kingdom.

She understood why she had been kept in the dark on this particular issue, although she hated herself a little bit for doing so. Of course Arthur ran off when he heard that she was in danger, without so much as a consultation or farewell or the courtesy to explain himself. Of course he did. This was the same fool whom she loved and who had proclaimed that he was willing to abandon his claim to the throne of Camelot if that was what it took in order to be with a commoner such as Guinevere. He did have his fits of gallantry that went above and beyond what was entirely necessary.

She wasn't surprised that Merlin had gone with him. She was fairly certain that Arthur wouldn't have even needed to try to persuade him. Merlin was a friendly person, but there were few people in his life that he truly loved, without reservation and without condition, and she knew that she was one of them. If he had gotten the news alone, Merlin probably would have gone off on his own without involving either Guinevere or Arthur.

Arthur and Merlin…she had known them as a unit for as long as they had been one, and she could still not decide if they were more dangerous or more formidable when they worked in tandem. The decisions that they made together were often not the most practical, but they were almost always strangely effective in whatever convoluted methods that were employed. It was very frustrating for a woman whose primary concern was usually for their safety.

They enabled each other in far too many ways. If Arthur had received the news alone, he probably would have run off to tell Merlin anyway.

She wished that that did not make her feel the pangs of jealous sadness that always seemed to stab at her whenever they did something like this, especially since she and Arthur had been married. It wasn't that she had hoped that her increased importance in Arthur's life would lessen Merlin's; it was just that she had hoped that it wasn't exactly unreasonable for her to expect to be kept in the loop nowadays. Wifely duties aside, Arthur had not run away from a serving girl, safe in her unimportance and negligible role in the larger scheme of things. Arthur had run away from a queen, his regent in writing, the woman in charge of the kingdom in his absence, a job for which she now realized she was entirely unprepared. It was not that she was incapable; she knew that she could do it. It was just that it had not yet occurred to either herself or her husband that she needed any extensive training in order to do so. They were too young and too newlywed to worry about such things…

But now Arthur was gone and she only had a vague idea of the direction that he must have taken. She couldn't even have sent riders after him if she'd wanted to, whether to bring him back or escort him toward his goal, with his safety increasing by his numbers. From the original rumors that had been confirmed into fact, Arthur and Merlin had taken off from the castle on the back of Merlin's white dragon and, although her interactions with the creature that he called Aithusa had been limited, she would have been a fool, she knew, to imagine that even the fastest of the horses in Camelot could catch them anytime soon.

Guinevere very suddenly became aware of an aching in her back, and she shifted herself, swinging her legs out from below the blankets of her bed and shivering at the coldness of the stones below her bare feet, glad that the nightclothes that she had chosen the night before to counter the strange chills that had been plaguing her all day were thick enough to keep the chill from the floor ascending higher on her body.

She supposed that she ought to also be glad that the nightclothes that she had chosen the night before were as modest as they were. If only she and Arthur had spent the night together in the shared chambers that adjoined each of their individual sets of rooms, none of this might be happening…

To his credit, Sir Gwaine did not wince or avert his eyes when the queen had taken to her feet before him, clad only in nightclothes, disheveled from a night's sleep, and without an appropriate chaperone in the room with them. Arthur's gallantry was one of his finest qualities, Guinevere felt, but Gwaine's frankness was a welcome change on this particular morning. And she didn't care anyway. It was just Gwaine.

Besides, she had to respect the fact that he had told her everything that he could about what had happened without peppering his tale with apologies. She was somewhat annoyed that he had waited until morning to come to her, clearly wanting to give Merlin and Arthur a head start before she could try to stop them, but he had come right out and admitted that as well. So it was a respectful annoyance.

It was rather improper, she knew, that she had a knight in her bedchambers without a guard or maidservant present and pretending not to eavesdrop. But she had known immediately from the look on Gwaine's face that what he had to say was not meant for the ears of a bored-looking guard, and she was still, more than a year past her coronation, very uncomfortable with being waited upon. Arthur teased her that she was trying to be her own servant, but she always stoutly informed him that, if she was capable of doing something herself, why should she make someone else do it? Considering that, as they had these conversations, Arthur was no doubt wearing clothing selected and assisted with the donning by his own manservant, the argument almost always ended with a laugh.

How was it that she missed him already?

"You're sure?" Guinevere asked for the fourth time.

With surprising patience, Gwaine's response was as calmly firm as it had been the first three times that he'd be asked. "Yes, my lady. I did not see the king, but there was no mistaking Merlin. He meant what he was saying. And he was scared."

Guinevere nodded, knowing that Gwaine would not have said that Merlin was scared if he did not truly believe it to be so. He had to know that learning of Merlin's anxiety would do nothing to relieve her own, but he seemed determined to be honest with her.

"And he didn't tell you anything?"

Gwaine shrugged. "Nothing particularly helpful. Just that Arthur had received a summons and that he was going with him because Arthur was going to need him. And, if I may say so myself, my lady, I didn't get the impression that Merlin was referring to company or conversation when he said that Arthur would be needing him by his side."

"Magic," whispered Guinevere.

Gwaine nodded. "That's what I figure."

She wanted to sit down again, but she knew that if she did, she'd have a hard time getting back up and moving again. So she began to pace back and forth, a quirk of Merlin's when he was anxious that she had picked up, her bare feet making soft slapping noises as she padded across the stone floor. She wasn't sure what she thought of Gwaine's agreement that whatever was going on had to do with magic sufficiently powerful that even enigmatic Merlin was showing his nerves. She did know that, whatever it was, she was glad that Merlin was with Arthur rather than with her just then.

Guinevere walked back to her bed and picked up the wavy piece of parchment that had obviously once been a scroll but had been unrolled and re-rolled so many times that it could no longer take its intended shape, and she read it over once again as she continued pacing.

Guinevere was not mentioned by name, but who else could it be concerning? It wouldn't have made sense for it to have been about anyone else. Addressed to Arthur, concerning "his woman" and her safety, with specifics about their private lives that she had not told a single soul and that she was sure that Arthur would not have shared with anyone other than perhaps Merlin, and she knew that Merlin valued Arthur's confidence far too much to spread his secrets around like common gossip. As much as she objected to being referred to as Arthur's "woman," she tried not to focus on it. She should have been more bothered by the content, should she not? Threats against her life, her health, her body from within, Camelot from within, Camelot from without, and so much that the writer knew that he or she should not know that it felt far too true for her to entirely condemn Arthur and Merlin for stealing off in the middle of the night as they had. It felt too real for her to call them complete fools for doing as they had done.

She wished that the writer had identified him or herself. Gwaine seemed convinced that whoever it was had been a woman, but he had been rather baffled and almost amused when she'd asked him why and he hadn't known. He'd finally informed her that it looked like a woman's writing which, by the interim in which he'd had to pause to come up with something and the fact that Gwaine had also once said that Arthur had a woman's writing, Guinevere took to mean that he didn't have any legitimate reason for his assumption and was just trying to cover his blunder.

She thought she knew why, though. The whole plot felt magical, between the knowledge that no one should have known, Merlin's alarm and insistence that Arthur would need him, the fact that no one could figure out how exactly the letter how found its way to Arthur. And when it came to magical mischief over the past decades, a great deal of the worst of it seemed to come at the hands of sorceresses. Nimue, the advisor turned attacker; Mary, the grieving mother who'd tried to kill Arthur, her plot only just foiled by a young boy, newly-arrived to Camelot, called Merlin, all those years ago; Sophia, the strange girl who'd tried to enchant and drown Arthur; Lady Catrina, the troll; Morgana, her friend and mistress and one of the people whom she mourned most, despite the fact that her death was not confimed; the strange Lamia girl, who had turned the gallant knights of Camelot against herself and Merlin; Morgause…

Morgause.

Guinevere was perhaps the only person in Camelot who hated Morgause more than any of the others. She did not despise Morgause for the damage that she'd caused Camelot, for her attempts on Uther's life, or even for the hand she played in the first usurping of the rightful king of Camelot. She despised Morgause for taking away all of the goodness that had been in Morgana, for stealing away her friend and sending back a fiend. Morgause's corruption of Morgana even played a part in why Guinevere still refused a regular maidservant. It would remind her of what she'd had with Morgana, and that would have been too much for her to bear on a daily basis.

Could it have been Morgause? Was Morgause the sender of the scroll that threatened everything good in her life?

Guinevere closed her eyes, even as she paced, and tried to pay no attention to the way in which her heart sank. What proof did they have of Morgause's death, beyond a few rumors and unsubstantiated claims? Could a sorceress as powerful as Morgause even be killed? She had put all of the castle to sleep, created an immortal army, brought forth Arthur's mother only to banish her again, blackened the heart of a confused young woman for no good reason at all…could any mortal means truly kill Morgause? She couldn't imagine any knife or sword or arrow or even illness being enough to destroy that witch. Besides, Lancelot had come back, hadn't he?

In the months after her banishment, as she wallowed in shame and the memory of what she had done, trying to figure out why she would have betrayed Arthur on the eve of their wedding, she had found hole after hole in the story that Lancelot had told after his mysterious reappearance. Arthur and Merlin had been so sure that he had been killed that day on the Isle of the Blessed, and she had never seen a body…if Lancelot was somehow brought back, good and brave and true Lancelot, couldn't someone so dark as Morgause come back as well?

It was so easy to forget sometimes that she could not judge all users of magic by the example set by Merlin. And there were plenty of stories that he refused to tell, that hollow and almost threatening deepness gathering in his gaze. Even the best of men, she understood, had their dark sides, and she knew for a fact that Arthur had woken up in a cold sweat on more than one occasion, saying before he remembered himself that he had dreamt of "a Merlin unleashed." Arthur had by far seen more of Merlin's magic than she had, and if Arthur—such a close friend to Merlin and with such knowledge of his power—could be haunted by Merlin's potential, she could not help but shudder herself.

Guinevere shook her head. She did not like thinking about what Merlin could become if he was turned as Morgana had been, good into evil and power into destruction, and she did not like thinking of Lancelot and all that had been that shouldn't have been and what could have been…

The familiar shame welled in her chest, and she opened her eyes, lest the tightness of her closed eyelids should allow unbidden tears to leak out. She was stronger than that.

"My lady?"

Guinevere jumped. She had almost forgotten Gwaine, and in a situation so serious that he insisted on addressing her with a proper title than the name under which he had first met her, she felt guilty. And she knew that she was going to have to take advantage of Gwaine's knowledge until Arthur and Merlin returned—his knowledge of the characters of both men; the sides generally not shown in the presence of ladies, even Guinevere; of what Merlin had said in their final interaction; of what others were thinking of her first attempt at solo regency; as the only other person in on the secret of where the king and his sorcerous advisor had disappeared to, the only other person to whom she would be able to speak openly until they respond.

Guinevere was very glad that Merlin had chosen Gwaine as the knight to be by her side at this time. She knew that Arthur probably would have approved as well, had he known.

Eventually, at least.

But Merlin had grown up commonly and Guinevere had grown up commonly and Gwaine had chosen to live commonly, and a confidante of a life of nobility just then would have served to make her nervous, rather than grant any relief. Sir Leon would have been Arthur's choice, she knew, and Leon would have been a good choice. But Gwaine was the right choice.

Very suddenly, a sort of wavery confidence washed over Guinevere, and she stood straight and tall and proud, feeling like a queen, in spite of her bare feet and rumpled hair and ridiculously long and high-necked nightdress, any urge to cry or tremble or curse Arthur or Merlin or even Morgause from afar for what she suspected was her role in the events of the night before.

"Were no other instructions left behind?" she asked Gwaine, pleased to hear a business-like tone in her voice.

"No. Just a lot of vague warnings. Pretty unhelpful, actually," responded Gwaine solemnly, before an inexplicable grin grew across his face.

"Why are you smiling if all you have are unhelpful vague warnings?"

Gwaine shrugged. "I'm just glad that I got a goodbye this time."

Guinevere stopped pacing and glared pointedly at him, and Gwaine's smile became slightly tinged with apology.

Slightly.

"Well, if that's all, Sir Gwaine, you may go," said Guinevere, attempting to sound as lofty as Arthur did when he was being deliberately dismissive. "I must dress and get ready for—"

"Oh! Wait," interrupted Gwaine, and he began rummaging in his pockets. "Merlin left me something else. He said that it was yours but I think that he was afraid that you would be so mad at him and Arthur that you'd destroy it before you got a chance to calm down and so he gave it to me. He said that you'd know what to do and—here it is!"

Gwaine withdrew from his pocket a small object. When Guinevere caught sight of what it was, she immediately glanced over at her small desk next to the windows through which the bright morning light was streaming into her chambers. It was the desk where she stored what she needed to keep up with her queenly correspondences, where she kept her parchment and her ink and her quills and her box of boring white candles for sealing wax on the majority of her letters and her…

"That stupid skinny sorcerous little sneak son of a—"

Gwaine laughed, and the rest of Guinevere's slur against Merlin turned into an unwilling smile. There were plenty of people in Camelot who laughed whenever she did something particularly unbefitting of a queen and indicative of her life outside of the luxuries of a castle, but Gwaine was one of the few who laughed in appreciation.

Gwaine held the half-burnt purple candle before him and turned it over in his hands, a doubtful expression on his face beneath the lingering vestiges of his laugh. "Does this actually serve a purpose, or did Merlin manage to find the time before he ran away on a super urgent secret mission to pull a practical joke on me?"

Guinevere shook her head, strode forward and took the purple candle from his rough hands. "No, it serves a purpose. Merlin gave it to me when…remember when he was exiled? And you didn't get a goodbye?"

Gwaine nodded, rolling his eyes and scowling a little bit at Guinevere's retaliatory dig at his lack of farewell the last time that Merlin had run off in the middle of the night. "It rings a bell."

"Well, when Merlin came to see me, I asked where was going so that I could write to him, just to know that he was alive and okay. He said that he didn't where he was going just yet, but I must have looked fairly pathetic, because he took a candle—one of the normal white ones that are all over the castle—and did something magical to it—I don't know what exactly—and he turned it purple and told me that, any letter than I sealed with the wax of that candle would find its way to him," explained Guinevere, trying and failing to convey just how impressive Merlin had looked as he transformed the plain old white candle into a lifeline between the two of them, even in his exile.

Gwaine took the candle back from her and measured it with his fingers. "You must not have written very many letters."

Guinevere smiled. "I wrote lots of letters. It's just that whatever he did to the candle kept the wax from running out. I could keep it lit it for hours and it still wouldn't burn down. Sealing aside, it's pretty handy."

Gwaine raised his eyebrows and nodded in agreement. Then, his brow furrowed. "Wait, you said that your letters 'find their way' to him. How does that work? Who do you send it with?"

Guinevere shook her head, taking the candle from him again. "I don't know how it works really, but I don't give it to anyone. I just write it, seal it, and toss it out of a window and it sort of…zooms away. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it works."

Gwaine nodded again and snaked the candle away, from what Guinevere presumed was a desire to see how many times he could get away with it. "This definitely sounds helpful."

The sudden seriousness of his tone surprised her, especially contrasted with the quick expression of self-satisfaction as he successful stole the candle once more. "Why do you say it like that?"

Gwaine looked her squarely in the eye. "I can think of a lot of things that I want to say to both Merlin and Arthur right now."

Guinevere automatically opened her mouth to defend them, out of sheer habit of having to rationalize some of the things that they did. But she thought of their secret departure and the summons and the threats and the things that were known that no one should have known and Morgause and Merlin and magic and revenge and of how she didn't know a damn thing other than that something was wrong and that her husband and her dearest friend were somewhere far away, where they could not help her decide.

So instead of any defense, she said, "So can I, Gwaine. So can I."

And she walked over to her desk, plans of dressing and styling and making herself presentable as Queen Guinevere forgotten as she thought of what she needed to say to the men who had left her. Finding a certain dignified poise, she sat at her desk, smoothed out a fresh piece of parchment, dipped a quill in a pot of ink, and began to write. Gwaine approached and leaned over her shoulder, reading what she wrote and interjecting from time to time. When she was done, she laid it in front of her and read it over once more, blowing gently on the ink to dry it. Beside her, she heard a hiss of flame as Gwaine lit the purple candle and, as he held it over the parchment and she placed her seal, she felt such an equality that she knew that they would make a good team, formidable enough to take on Camelot until Arthur and Merlin returned.

Or so she hoped.

Guinevere opened one of her windows and tossed the letter, rather thicker than her past notes, mostly due to some of the lengthy and particularly colorful descriptors that Gwaine felt necessary to include. It dropped nearly halfway down the wall, and Guinevere had just enough time to worry that the candle was somehow no longer working and that Arthur and Merlin would never receive the note when it swooped upward, as though caught in a sudden updraft, and her words soared off into the horizon.

She could only pray that she would get a response.

.

.

.


	4. Sensitivity And Suspicions

Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

Morning came far too soon for Arthur's taste.

He had assumed that he'd have no problem falling asleep. He'd been awake and running around for the half of the night before that was not spent clinging to the back of a dragon that seemed determined to throw him off at any moment, his nerves receding only slightly as the many hours of the day passed them by, in the air and far too high for any hopes of survival, should a spiteful dragon choose to take a sudden roll in the air just because Arthur may have implied that it had a few things in common with a horse. Arthur didn't see why Aithusa had taken offense. He hadn't meant it as an insult. Arthur liked horses. He may not have been able to have secret magical conversations with them as Merlin could, despite his bemused and slightly concerned protests to the contrary, but Arthur liked horses. What wasn't to like?

Merlin could have at least warned him that dragons were so touchy.

But in those early hours, Arthur hadn't needed to be awake for more than a few minutes to know that the dragon wasn't likely to be the only one of their mismatched trio that would be somewhat touchy that morning. The night before, as he had lain himself down to try to sleep, weariness had wracked him, body worn and sore from the hours clutching the dragon and holding himself stiffly upon its back, mind exhausted from the worries and considerations and reconsiderations that repeated themselves over and over again in his head, with just about every part of him exhausted.

And yet sleep hadn't come, not for hours. He'd had a blanket and a pack that, if punched into a certain shape, could more or less function as a pillow. He'd had a full belly, courtesy of the hunger that had rendered him willing to eat just about anything and of the food that Merlin had managed to sneak from the kitchens after he had run off and told Gwaine all about their plans, despite Arthur's clear and direct orders to the contrary. He'd had a warm fire at his feet, a sword inches from his fingertips and ready for the wielding, a friendly sorcerer adjacent somewhere in the darkness, and a bloody dragon. Substandard comforts aside, Arthur had known that he couldn't have gotten much safer anywhere, including his castle.

But there was no sleep, and the madder that Arthur became at that frustrating fact, the less likely it became that he'd be able to lull himself into a slumber. He had found himself wishing for Guinevere more than once, which just ended up making him even angrier. This was not a place for Guinevere, and thinking about her would just make everything all the more difficult.

Yet how could he not? How he had left, without so much as a cursory wave or scribbled note for her, haunted him. What if he did not return? She would have every cause to remember him poorly. And then there was his kingdom…he had just left. It was only though pure luck that he had even bothered to have documents drawn up that established a legal regent in his absence. It was natural, of course, that a queen would rule in the place of a king if he were indisposed, but there had been so much discussion amongst his noblemen about the lowness of Guinevere's birth and how it no doubt rendered her incapable of ruling a kingdom that Arthur had put his foot down and made the whole thing official.

But making something legal wasn't the same as making something simple, and he knew it. During that long night, he had almost awoken Merlin a few times, just to talk to him, to hear another person say that they had done the right thing and that Guinevere would be alright without them and Camelot would be alright without them and this whole situation could not be resolved without them being gone. Merlin might not have known for sure any more than Arthur did, but he would have wanted to believe it just as much as Arthur, and Arthur figured that their mutual desperation could at least make him feel less alone, camped in a desolate patch of trees beside a clearing for the dragon with whom he was currently on bad terms in the middle of a forest that he did not know, unsure of whose lands they were traversing at this point, chasing a phantom threat. Yes, he almost shook Merlin until he sat up, awake and swearing and alive enough to empathize. But Merlin knew better than anyone that legalizing something was not the same as simplifying it, and Arthur was not sure that he could bear the unconscious reproach that would take up residence in Merlin's eyes as they both remembered what had led to their rift and separation…

So instead of waking Merlin, he just rolled over on the lumpy forest floor and continued stewing.

In hindsight, that may not have been his most practical of decisions. He was awake enough to realize that, at least. Yet if Arthur had been paying more attention to his surroundings during that long night, he might have noticed that Merlin's breathing did not have the steadiness of a man asleep, that his arms were stiff and unrelaxed, that he rolled around on his blanket on the other side of the fire almost as much as Arthur did. If Arthur had known then that Merlin too was being haunted by what they were doing and what they had done, that he too was kept awake by it…Arthur might have been able to sleep.

But he did not learn of Merlin's sleeplessness until much later. So he lay, awake and uncomfortable and unhappy and so very uncertain that he did not feel the least bit like himself. He was used to being in control of something. It wasn't that he needed Merlin to act as manservant again or begin calling him "sire" or bowing or anything. It wasn't that sort of control that he was missing. It just felt as though he was a spectator in a grand chaos that was being enacted in his name, yet he lacked the freedom or ability to bear any influence beyond what little could be accomplished by his presence alone.

The note had been addressed to Arthur; Merlin had been the first to read it.

They needed to leave the castle as soon as possible; instead of guiding and urging on his horse, they were traveling at unnatural heights with frightening speed on the back of a willful dragon, who seemed determined to unnerve Arthur and making turns and shifts at whim.

They were racing toward what was almost certainly to be a battle for their lives, in which one side or the other was not likely to survive the encounter; Arthur had sword and shield and knife and bow and he had Merlin, and he knew damn well that it was looking as though not even Excalibur was likely to be the main weapon in whatever battle unfolded. And it wasn't as though he could wield Merlin.

There was so much happening and it was all happening around him and he had almost nothing to do with how it was happening. It was hardly the first time that he'd felt impotent; it was just the first time that there was so much immediately at risk and that he'd had nothing else to preoccupy him.

So he lay awake for hours and hours until the heavy constancy of Aithusa's massive breaths, which fluttered the leaves of the trees around them into a symphony of forest whispers, and the warmth of the dying fire were enough to push him over the edge into an uneasy sleep.

An uneasy sleep from which he had been promptly and unceremoniously awakened once the sun began to peek its way over the trees, and the watery light of a reluctant dawn began to filter its way down to where they had lain, on either side of the blackened remains of an extinguished campfire.

An uneasy sleep from which he had been promptly and unceremoniously awakened when he was smacked in the side of the face with a pinecone.

He therefore felt that Merlin had better have the grace to take any grouchiness from Arthur in stride; being dragged from sleep by a blow to the face delivered via local vegetation was not an act that generally provoked any morning cheer from Arthur. And his morning cheer was rare enough as it was.

Merlin, however, hadn't seemed to notice the darkness of his mood as he forced himself to unroll from his blanket. Merlin was skipping and stumbling about their small camp, packing what little had been unpacked and setting out a modest fare of food and drink, despite his repeated insistences that he would not be doing anything remotely servantly for Arthur on this trip. Arthur figured that Merlin's old habits were just dying hard, and he did not have the energy to work up any gratitude. Besides, half of what Merlin was setting out was for himself. How much effort could doubling it really cost him?

He, who would not just take a hint and shut up and let Arthur wake properly on his own.

"Rise and shine, Arthur! Rise and…come on, get up. I know that you're not really falling back to sleep, I've seen you try that a hundred times. Get up. We have a lot to do and a long way to go before sunset, I think. Aithusa's off hunting and finding water for himself so that he won't pass out and send us all falling to our deaths today, because you know that I ordered him to fly us where we need to go and he can't really disobey because I'm a Dragonlord and all of that so he might think he wouldn't be allowed to stop so he's fueling himself up somewhere hereabouts and we had better get some food in us because it would be just as bad if either of us were to pass out up there. I mean, he'd probably bite off his own tail if he thought that it would save me, but he's not your biggest fan right now, Arthur, so I'm not sure how hasty he would be to swoop in and save you if you fell off and…for heaven's sake, get up already, Arthur, or you'll be getting worse than pinecones soon!"

Merlin kept chattering, and the only thing that kept Arthur from taking his blanket and slouching deeper into the forest to go back to sleep somewhere beyond Merlin's inane morning babble was the fact that Merlin probably did have far more tricks up his sleeve significantly more annoying that a few flying pinecones. Grumbling indistinctly, Arthur shoved himself up and gave a sort of halfhearted stretch.

It was apparently enough for Merlin, who just went back to his business about the camp, keeping his face so strangely averted toward the ground that Arthur almost missed the purple shadows under his eyes, deep and dark and unhappy. He seemed to be moving as a matter of routine, just adjusted for two. His words were telling an annoyingly peppy tale; his face and eyes, stormy and tense, told another.

Unfortunately for both of them, Arthur was grouchy enough that he immediately chose to focus on the annoying peppiness rather than the relatable unhappiness with their current lot.

Trying not to look at him and be tempted to start something that would doubtless not end well, Arthur bent down to pick up his blanket and beat it noisily against his knee, and the leaves and twigs that had attached themselves to the rough wool over the night falling to the ground. Merlin paid him no mind.

How that managed to annoy Arthur, he would never be sure. It wasn't as though this was their first secret journey into the wilderness with only the other for company. Although it was their first since Merlin had returned from his banishment…

Later, all that Arthur would remember of what had started it that morning was that the worst part of everything about as much of the day as he had currently been awake to experience was how comfortable Merlin seemed to be with it all.

Objectively, Arthur knew that it made sense for Merlin to be able to quickly adapt to the material difficulties of a haphazard journey over miles and miles of unfamiliar forest that all seemed to blend together. Merlin had had six months of exile in which he could perfect the process. Arthur wasn't even used to secret quests that didn't involve some sort of underling. Whether it was a knight or a guard or a servant, Arthur always had someone with a set role who would do as he ordered without question, unless it was particularly irrational. That wasn't Merlin anymore, and Arthur wasn't even sure what sort of orders he would give, if he dared to try. Arthur had spent so much of the past two years devoted to the ruling portion of his kingly duties. Merlin had finally become more familiar with adventure that he had.

Then, suddenly, Arthur realized that Merlin was no longer chattering in the background. He seized his opportunity to try to understand some of what was making Merlin so comfortable with their current situation.

"Merlin."

Merlin jumped and began kicking at the ground for no apparent reason, clearly trying to cover the fact that he'd been watching Arthur. The look of concern that he was trying to conceal by staring into the hard dirt below his feet lingered long enough for Arthur to identify and become distinctly aggravated by it.

"What?"

Arthur was too tired to try to work himself up to care about whatever had overtaken Merlin now. He began putting back on the layers of clothing that he'd dared to remove as he sought sleep, and he started carefully reslinging his weapons about his body. "When you were in exile, did you ever travel by dragon?"

Merlin gave him a funny look and stopped his useless stomping. "I had Buttercup, Arthur. I went by horseback."

That was right. Merlin had had his horse with him, that mare with the ridiculous name that Merlin had loved and that Arthur had left him before he went away into exile, presumably forever. Arthur bit his lip, slightly shaken. This was not something that he ought to have forgotten. He had gone to great pains to set up a scenario in which he could go out of his way to give Merlin his horse without it seeming as though he was going out of his way to give Merlin his horse. How had he forgotten that? He opened his mouth to say something defensive, to try to justify his lapse in memory regarding such a memorable act, although he did not know what. It would probably be unpleasant.

Then, before Arthur could blurt out something that he would probably regret, a huge shadow passed overhead. He looked up in alarm, hand automatically going to his hip, fingers curling around the exquisite hilt of Excalibur.

Merlin hadn't moved.

"Aithusa's back," he said, so casually and so quietly and so normally that Arthur felt as though his head was going to explode with the oddity of the whole thing. Merlin just bent down and picked up a crust of bread, unconcerned. Chewing on it absently, he leant back against a tree trunk and faced the clearing where the dragon had slept, clearly waiting for it to circle down and land. Arthur's heart began to jump in his chest, and he found himself somehow hoping that the dragon was going to come down and say that, sorry, but he was bored with toting them around and they could just make their way on their own.

On the ground.

"I'm not getting back on that thing," Arthur heard himself say.

When Merlin glanced at him, surprise in his eyes and bread in his mouth, Arthur nearly had the presence of mind to feel guilty. And idiotic. What a stupid thing to say! They needed the dragon.

Merlin swallowed his mouthful of dry bread and looked at him reproachfully. "Come on, Arthur. Don't be a prat to Aithusa just because you're sleepy. I'm tired too, but you don't see me whining about our ride. Just eat some stale bread, drink some warm water, take a stretch, and put a smile on your face, because he'll be down in a moment and it is will be time for us to be up again."

"Feel free to go up as high as you want to, Merlin. I won't do it," Arthur said stubbornly, not really knowing why he was difficult other than the fact that he was scared and worried and he'd finally fallen asleep and Merlin had had to be the unlucky person to wake him.

Merlin bit his lip and did not speak for a long moment. Arthur had the impression that he only just avoided a response far sharper than the one that followed.

"Think of it this way, Arthur," said Merlin, his voice so bright that Arthur knew that it was faked. "It would take us weeks to get there on horseback."

"We don't even know where we're going," Arthur muttered sullenly, voicing one of his more valid concerns for the morning, his ability to think clearly having returned to him once he'd been let off of the damn dragon the night before.

"We know what direction!" answered Merlin, sounding more annoyingly chipper than ever and glossing over the unfortunate truth in Arthur's statement. He pushed himself up off of the tree trunk and began to walk back and forth.

Arthur ignored the warning signs. "Yes, but that's it. We're supposed to go north until the 'time is right' for the location to 'be revealed to me.' I read the scroll too, Merlin! But it doesn't make any sense."

Merlin's pace increased. "Sure it does."

"Maybe to you, Sir Sorcery, but to normal people, that just sounds like a bunch of nonsense. Does having magic equate to only being capable of speaking vaguely? We didn't think this through, Merlin. We read the note and panicked and left before we realized that it was a really really bad idea."

Merlin's voice was taking on the manic tone that usually warned Arthur that it was probably time for him to back off and either agree for the time being with whatever Merlin was saying or drop whatever it was that they were arguing about until they were both feeling more reasonable. Especially now that he knew the extent of Merlin's powers.

"Speak for yourself, Arthur," said Merlin, speeding his way through the syllables. "I realized immediately that this was a really really bad idea."

Arthur crossed his arms over his chest and stood stock still, a strangely grounded point in the face of Merlin's frenetic pace across their camp. "We need to rethink our strategy."

"What strategy?" asked Merlin, laughing with the sort of hysterical edge that should have told him that Merlin was even more sleepless than he was and that Merlin would not bear much more pushing before he snapped. And that should have reminded him that Merlin really didn't have to be here if he hadn't chosen to remain at Arthur's side. "You just don't want to get back up on the dragon."

Arthur continued recklessly. "That's not it, Merlin! We knew exactly what we needed to do to get started, and I think that we both know what we're planning on doing to finish it. But the whole middle bit? I think that we've left a few key things out! Like where the hell we're going!"

Merlin actually waved his hand in front of him, as though both Arthur and his protest were no more than particularly persistent flies that he could just brush away. "Look, Arthur, don't worry about it. I know that this doesn't make sense to you—I do, truly—but it makes sense to me. If I were trying to lure someone into a trap, I'd probably do it the same way. We couldn't have told anyone where we were going because we didn't know. What better way to ensnare a king?"

Arthur felt himself beginning to become legitimately angry, beyond his original desire to just provoke Merlin into becoming as aggravated at being awake as he was. His concerns were legitimate, and even if he wasn't voicing them the most calmly, Merlin could at least acknowledge that Arthur had the right to be rather uncertain. "You haven't said how we're going to realize when the 'time is right.' What if we don't recognize the signs when they happen?"

Merlin stopped pacing very suddenly and hesitated, looking as though he had two things that he could say but was unsure which Arthur most deserved. Glancing at Arthur's scowl, Merlin seemed to make up his mind. "Well, I don't know everything. I know what I would do, but I can't predict every little thing that every single sorcerer in the five kingdoms will do at a given time."

Merlin had blown off his question, and he knew it.

And Arthur did not appreciate it. "You know what you would do? Do you have a lot of evil traps planned out in your head? Just in case?"

Merlin let out a groan that was half a roar, and Arthur was so sure that he saw a flash of gold in the sorcerer's blue eyes that he took several steps backward before he realized that Merlin was not going to attack him.

"It was a long flight, Arthur! I got bored! Aithusa was flying too hard and being too sulky to want to talk because somebody just had to go and compare him to a horse, and you were too busy being terrified like a little girl to be a particularly entertaining companion, so my mind wandered. So exile me, Arthur! Oh, wait, now I remember. You already did that," he said nastily.

Arthur gritted his teeth, trying to regain the calm that he had so unwisely dismissed before entering into a conversation like this with Merlin. He was so sensitive about dragons! Provoking a sleep-deprived and anxious Merlin at dawn suddenly seemed like a far worse idea now that he was starting to wake up. "How would you do it, then?"

Merlin ran his hands through his hair. As he lifted his messy bangs up off of his forehead and away from his face, Arthur more clearly the puffy purple bruises under his eyes and the paleness that was exaggerated even for Merlin and found himself regretting more than ever his snippiness. Merlin looked as though he had slept even less than he had.

Nevertheless, Merlin answered. "Hmm? Oh. Magic."

Arthur took a deep breath before answering. Calm. He could be calm.

"I figured that much out on my own, Merlin."

Merlin just shrugged. "Okay, fancy magic, then."

Although Merlin didn't have to be so annoying about it.

"Merlin—"

And then, finally, Merlin began to crumble. "You wouldn't understand, Arthur, and I'm not just saying that to irritate you. They only way that I can think of to explain it involves a lot of words in a language in which you are most certainly not fluent. So just…trust me. I'm not worried about how we're going to find our way, and I don't think that you should be either."

Anger suddenly flared back up in Arthur, efforts at calmness abandoned, and he was almost dizzied by the frenzy with which his emotions seemed to be shifting. Merlin wasn't worried? How much of a fool did he think that Arthur was?

"Don't lie to me, Merlin. I think there's been enough of that in the past, don't you?"

"I'm not lying!" Merlin glared at him furiously, the fire in his eyes almost too intense for Arthur to notice the slight blush in his cheeks. Arthur was almost ashamed of himself—it was a low blow to throw Merlin's past deceptions back in his face, now that Arthur had forgiven them.

But at that moment, Arthur didn't care. "Like hell you're not! You think that I can't tell when people are worried? I'm a king! And you haven't exactly been looking your most tranquil over the last day and a half."

Merlin took a few steps toward Arthur. "Of course I'm worried, Arthur, I'm not an idiot! I'm just not worried about this. What we find when we get there? That's what I'm worried about, so don't start throwing temper tantrums every time that you don't understand something, because I don't have the patience to deal with two dozen of them every day."

Arthur stood his ground. "Do you think that you're making me feel better? Going on and on about how scared you are about the magic that's waiting wherever it is that we're going?"

Merlin actually laughed. "I'm not trying to make you feel better, Arthur! I'm trying to treat you like an adult. I'm sorry if that's too much for you, sire. Maybe we should have brought Robert along so that you could have a servant to nurse you through every little ailment while I figure out what the hell we have to do."

Arthur wanted to punch him. "I didn't ask you to come, Merlin!"

Merlin snorted. "You wouldn't have made it ten miles from the castle without me. You probably wouldn't even have opened the note if I hadn't been there and done it for you. Don't swell up like that, Arthur, it makes you look like a bullfrog. Of course I came, you idiot. And you might as well get used to the idea that you won't make it there without me, let alone face her. That's how it's always been on these quests of ours, Arthur, and this time, it's going to be out in the open. So you go on being brave and honest and inspirational and all the things that you do best and have kept me around and by your side for the past eight years, and I'll do what I can to eke us by to live another day. Call me a liar and stew on how just it was that you banished me and remember all of the wrongs done you by magic—don't look at me like that, I'm not denying them—all you want. Just…do it in your head and try to keep your head on straight and try to remember that I'm not your manservant and for heaven's sake, get on the damn dragon."

Arthur paused before retorting, the bile gone out of him with such unnatural immediacy that he felt a strange emptiness within him for a moment, before he picked up on the little thing that Merlin had snarled at him that changed everything. 'Her,' Merlin had said. From the redness in his face and the ineloquence of his speech, Arthur knew that Merlin had been just shouting whatever slur against Arthur that happened to pop into his head. He probably hadn't even registered…

"Who's 'her?'" asked Arthur, quietly, not for the first time thinking of how similar his relationship with Merlin could sometimes be to the relationship he'd once had with Morgana, before it had all gone to hell and when they'd thought each other surrogate siblings and loved each other accordingly. They could fight and argue and rage at each other until they were blue in the face...until something truly important arose, and they forgave each other without a second thought.

"What?" snapped Merlin, still looking angry, but surprise at Arthur's suddenly calmer tone apparently mollified him somewhat.

"You said that I would need you with me to face 'her.'"

"Oh," said Merlin, and paused just long enough for Arthur to begin to wonder. Did Merlin really have the same suspicions that he did? They had rather conspicuously avoided discussing who the sender of the scroll might have been, other than a few frustrated complaints that it probably wouldn't have killed whoever it was to include a signature. Arthur knew who he thought it was, but he hadn't wanted to say it, because if he said it, Merlin might agree, and then it would be true because he trusted Merlin despite everything, and Arthur didn't want it to be true, even after all these years that she had been gone and all of the things that she had done…he didn't want her to have to die…

But Merlin just shook his head, his hesitation passed. "It doesn't matter who 'her' is. I was just ranting, Arthur, and I picked a pronoun. Whoever it is, I can handle it, no problem. We're meant to succeed, Arthur, you and I. And I've never really one to question destiny. I know that we'll win this one."

Arthur just looked at him, sadness creeping into his heart as he looked at Merlin's expression, confident and bland and harmless and respectful and semi-amused, a neutral smile so friendly and eyes so oblivious that they almost appeared vacant, and so very dreadfully familiar that it was devastating, because Arthur knew what that expression meant. He'd seen it on the young man's face nearly every day during the first six years in which they had known each other, and it was only after he'd learned of the lengths to which Merlin's had gone to conceal his magic that he had figured it out. Yes, Arthur knew what that expression meant.

Merlin was lying.

.

.


	5. The Long Reach Of The Dark Hand

Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

Merlin was beginning to worry about Arthur.

Merlin was beginning to worry about Arthur and, as he spent most of his waking hours sitting still atop a dragon, he had plenty of time to think about it. And this day was no different.

In this way, at least.

Arthur had always been the brave one on their various missions into the forest—steadfast, confident, determined. Not that Merlin had been a coward—despite Arthur's frequent accusations to the contrary, Merlin had always known that he had his own share of bravery. Arthur just couldn't know about it...because it was illegal.

But Arthur was always in charge, and Arthur being in charge always gave Merlin the freedom to inquire about what they were doing so that Arthur could be sure of his details, to point out the inconsistencies to at the very least get them on the same page, to complain about being tired to remind Arthur that he needed sleep as well and that even a prince could not march on for days on end without respite by sheer will power alone. Arthur had been in charge and kept them motivated and kept them going; Merlin had been his second, and he kept them functioning. It was a good combination, and it worked.

But what they were doing now was not working. Merlin wasn't sure what it was—Merlin's elevation from manservant, the fact that they were questing on Arthur's personal behalf rather than for the good of the kingdom and that they might die for it, that their method of travel was one over which he had no control and with which he was uncomfortable, that neither of them knew what they were going to face and both of them knew that they did not agree on it, that Arthur had believed Merlin when he'd claimed with far too much bluntness that Arthur would be all but useless in the fight against whatever foe they faced when they arrived at their destination, that they honestly didn't know where they were going, that he and Merlin had been arguing more than they had been getting along for some inexplicable reason that neither had been able to identify—but something wasn't working as it used to. Arthur seemed just…tired. He had been growing, steadily, more and more lethargic and unmotivated and quiet and, worst of all, forgetful.

At first, Merlin had been afraid that something was legitimately wrong with Arthur, that something in his body was beginning to fail him and his mind was fading away and that Merlin didn't know how to stop it. He'd gone so far as to stop insinuating that Arthur was half an idiot whenever he got annoyed with him.

Then, Merlin had noted something that both reassured and angered him. During the few moments over the past three days of travel, as he had grown more and more distant, when Arthur had become animated, his memory had become perfect, his mind as sharp as it had ever been, his determination blazing in his face with such fervor that Merlin was reminded why Arthur was meant to be a king.

But then it would be time to get on the dragon again, and his eyes would glaze over, and Arthur would give into the thoughts and worries that kept him far away from where he was riding, hundreds of feet in the air, on the back of a creature that he had been raised to despise. Arthur had learned that dragons were not inherently bad and were creatures to be treated with respect in the months since Merlin had returned to Camelot, but Merlin knew perfectly well that it took more than half of a year to overcome an aversion that had lasted for nearly thirty. Arthur hated riding on that dragon, and if he kept disappearing inside of himself every time that they climbed onto his back, he would never get used to it. He would learn to appreciate the genuine fun in the experience.

Over the previous three days that they had spent in flight after their argument in the forest, Merlin had grown more and more anxious to reach their destination. By the fifth, as they flew, the anxiety was reaching a breaking point, and he almost felt sick with it. He was in no hurry to face what he knew was waiting for them, but he felt that a few more hours every day with his feet on the ground would do a great deal to bring Arthur back into himself. They would be more exhausted by the time that the sun set and their journey would have been lengthened significantly, but Arthur would have had to put one foot in front of the other, over and over again, dodging branches and hopping ditches and finding ways to cross rivers and rolling his eyes as he had to stop to yank Merlin to his feet after he had inevitably tripped on something. Arthur would have needed to be present.

Merlin needed Arthur to be present. He had learned, to his dismay and slight embarrassment, that, at times like this, he could not lead nearly as well as Arthur could. He'd always been confident in his skills as a sorcerer, and he knew that had led to a bit of arrogance when it came to other areas, especially as he grew better and better at harnessing his powers. And, as he had learned during his travels whilst banished, with his encounters with other groups of sorcerers, he was rather capable at garnering loyalty. He had received pledges of allegiance from scores of them with such relatively little effort that he had been somewhat alarmed at first. When they had seen his magic and connected him to their prophecies, it was usually "Emrys this" and "Emrys that." Yes, when it came to magic, he could lead. He was comfortable. But when it came to this little journey, with camping and hiking and a man who was not magical, Merlin was stuck. He could have been Arthur's second in an instant, even in the face of a horde. But now, he needed Arthur to step up and demand to give orders and be a general prat about it, take the role established so many years ago, so that Merlin could take his role and question and pick apart and prepare. When it came to the two of them in a situation like this, they needed to stick with what they knew, even if Merlin refused to act as a servant again. But Arthur was somewhere else and going through the motions, and so they were fighting and tired and tense and all but silent with each other, and Merlin knew damn well that they didn't stand a chance against whatever they were seeking if they didn't start working together as a team, as they were so capable. He'd had such hopes, even in the darkness of what they were facing, that they could take their parts and be equals in the acknowledgment of their equal, if different, necessities. 

But he didn't know how to make it happen. He'd considered smacking Arthur in the face on several occasions, but only about half of those had been out of a desire to snap him out of his lethargy. The other half were just because Merlin was annoyed with him.

So Merlin was beginning to worry about Arthur, and he could not deny that he somewhat resented Arthur for it.

As if Merlin hadn't already had enough to worry about!

But, despite their snippiness with each other and despite Arthur's listlessness and despite how much they both would have benefited from a good day's hike and campfire conversation, Merlin had too much faith in Arhur to abandon the goal and admittedly primitive plan that they had set back in the beginning when they had still been the formidable unit that was keeping the newly lawful coexistence between magic and non-magic at a tentative peace by the sheer force of their well-known friendship. Merlin believed too much in Arthur and believed too much in the need for haste in this journey for him to delay for too long. He had begun starting an hour later than they had on that first full day of flight and they were now landing for the night an hour or so before sundown. Wouldn't that be enough?

He figured that the two hours off would make up for themselves if he and Arthur—and Aithusa, for that matter—improved from the extra rest.

Besides, he'd had something of a scare himself. Since Arthur didn't seem to be paying much attention to the land below them, looking for landmarks of any sort that might point them on their way, Merlin alone had had to take up that duty without much of any respite. He hadn't bothered to complain to Arthur about it, though; Arthur was still so squeamish about flying that Merlin wasn't sure that he would be able look down at the ground from their height for very long without having something of a breakdown. Merlin figured that, even if Arthur had been the most alert person in the five kingdoms, this particular duty still would have been his own.

Still, by the time that the afternoon rolled around each day, Merlin's eyes were just about worn out, and he feared that he was beginning to see things that were not there and sense things that could not possibly be real. Feel things that he should not be feeling. He would get the strange tingling that he often experience when in the presence of powerful magic, but he always had to dismiss it. He often got such feelings from Aithusa, especially when he was tired. Merlin had grown to equate it to magical perspiration. It was nothing, certainly.

He also attributed some of the phantom sensations—for surely they were phantom—to a guilty conscience. He shouldn't have done it, and he knew it. Part of him wondered if Arthur sensed that he was being dishonest about something—again—and that was contributing to their current distance with one another. Merlin told himself that this was for Arthur's own good. It didn't really matter that he had told himself the same thing so many times in the past to justify his lies. This time was different. Wasn't it?

It wasn't like Arthur had ever asked him about it or anything. And they hadn't exactly gone into any lengthy discussions of what they had packed. They might have, were they speaking as usual, out of sheer boredom by that point, but even if Merlin hadn't felt guilty about what he had brought with him, it still would have been a sticky subject for him. He had forgotten the Sidhe staff that he had acquired so many years ago. His knowledge of spellwork and his ability to control his powers without the need to channel them through such an item had increased to a point that he'd been known to forget that he possessed the damn thing. But if he was wounded or tired or barely conscious, he thought that maybe it would have allowed him to channel his powers enough to remain dangerous, even if he could not speak or move well enough to do what he truly could. It was such a stupid thing to forget. It's not like it was heavy or anything…

So he was not particularly anxious to discuss what they had each packed in their personal bags. He didn't think that Arthur would have particularly cared that Merlin had forgotten the Sidhe staff; now that he thought about it, he wasn't even sure if Arthur knew that he possessed such an item. But then there was that other thing…

Merlin hadn't even opened it. Part of it was that he had memorized the damn thing after he'd read it the first time—the contents were rather memorable—and part of it was a fear that, no matter how secluded a spot that he might have found to examine it, he was afraid that Arthur would see him with it, and that would probably lead to an even bigger fight than the one they'd had on that first morning.

It was a copy of the scroll.

It was the copy of the scroll.

Merlin just hadn't felt right leaving without it. He'd known that Gwaine—and Guinevere—needed to have it with them, but where he and Arthur were going…what if they needed it for something? What if she demanded to see it, as proof that they were who they said they were? What if they needed it as some sort of key to enter wherever it was that they were going? What if it had been enchanted to reword itself or catch flame or something to tell them when they were in the right place?

They were flimsy excuses, and he knew it. But when he looked at the scroll, alone with it after Arthur had gone to fetch some supplies that would be easier granted to the king rather than an underling and with the instructions to find a way to leave it for Guinevere to find in the morning, after they were gone, he'd felt a strange need to keep it with him.

Something about the parchment, strange under his fingers…the wax of the seal, broken but gleaming so strangely in the candlelight, suddenly flickering, even though there was no breeze or movement in the corridor…the ink that glistened as though wet, yet dry to the touch…

It was only after he heard a loud bang at the opposite end of the corridor that he'd looked up and seen that the candles were so much lower than they had been when he'd noticed their sudden flickering…he'd been standing there for much longer than he'd thought. Just...standing there. And staring. There was something about this scroll, some magic so very powerful that even he could not decipher easily, magic that felt sinister and fascinating and seductive all at once.

So he'd found a sheet of plain parchment and a candle and experimented until he managed a spell that transferred the contents of the original note onto the fresh. After a few more minutes, he managed to find a way to replicate the original wax seal. Then he had rolled up the original and sealed it, trying to conceal its genuine identity, and tucked it into his bag, and taking the new scroll in his hand. He broke the new seal and, as he began to traverse the corridors, began rolling and unrolling in his hands, trying to give it the look of being read and reread, opened and reopened. Trying to make it look like it was exactly what Merlin said it was.

When he'd tracked down Gwaine and given him the new scroll, he had been far too full of adrenaline and nerves to feel any guilt. When he'd climbed onto Aithusa's back, he was too frustrated with how long it had taken to talk Arthur into doing the same to feel any guilt. When they had taken flight from the roof of the castle and soared north into the night, he had been too exhilarated and too high from the rush of what they had just done to feel any guilt. When he had noticed the look on Arthur's face, he had been too conflicted between amusement and concern that the king would fall right off of the dragon to feel any guilt. When they had finally landed, he had been too busy pestering Arthur into gathering firewood and then starting the fire to feel any guilt. When they had eaten a meager meal and tried to find comfortable places to sleep for the night, he'd been too tired to feel any guilt. But when he laid himself down and shut his eyes, it had hit him.

The shame.

The guilt.

It felt far too familiar...

Yet why should he feel guilty? It was just a note. It was just words. Words were nothing. So what if he wanted to have them with him? It made sense. It wasn't irrational or anything, like the little voice in the back of head kept trying to tell him. What if they needed the summons with them? It made sense.

Which didn't exactly explain why he didn't want to tell Arthur what he had done.

But then there was the other thing. There was magic in that scroll. He knew it, even if he couldn't explain it. And it wasn't good magic. He felt that, at least. Maybe if he kept it with him, if he had it with him for long enough, it would come to him, and he'd understand. At the very least, it was probably a good idea not to leave a scroll created with darker magic than he'd ever dared to try in a castle of innocents, with no magical protector within the walls to combat any ill that might come out of it. What did it matter if they had a fake? They had the words, and that was all that they would need.

Still…he felt that Arthur ought to know. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He felt exactly as he had for such a long time, once he was three years, four years, six years into his friendship with Arthur. By the time that he felt that he could tell him, it was too late for forgiveness. He'd been lying about it too long. The best that he'd been able to do with that, his biggest and most terrible secret, was to keep lying and keep deceiving and just delay the awful and inevitable day that Arthur would finally find out or, for heaven's sake, figure it out. Merlin knew that he was lucky, so very lucky, with the way that he had emerged from that ordeal without having lost much of anything beyond six months of exile, and even those had been profitable. He was so very lucky that Arthur was not Uther. But he wasn't sure if he could get away with it again, the lying. And not when the stakes were this high. Arthur could only tolerate so much, and Merlin could not resent him for it. He wasn't sure if he deserved to get away with it again.

So he kept the scroll secret and hidden and untouched in his bag, secure in the knowledge that Arthur seemed to be lacking in the motivation to properly roll out his own blanket every night, let alone work up the curiosity to root around Merlin's belongings. Merlin kept his secret.

And he did not sleep.

So he was fairly sure that it was the secrecy and the sleeplessness and the guilt that were making him see things that could not be there. Besides, staring into sunshine for ten hours every day could not have been good for him.

Anyway, the things that he thought that he was seeing just didn't make sense. For one thing, he thought that he saw shadows racing each other below the canopy of the trees below them, large and small, four-legged and six-legged and eight-legged and even two-legged, all racing south as they flew north. But those had to be tricks of the sunlight.

And then there was that instant when he'd glanced behind him, as he did every half hour or so, just to make sure that Arthur didn't look like he was about to fall off, when he'd sworn that he'd seen a thick sheaf of parchment chasing them on the bag of the dragon. Of course, his heart had leapt and he'd nearly fallen off of Aithusa's back, sure that it was a letter from Guinevere and Gwaine, no doubt full of indignance and insults and questions, but a letter. Contact. He could almost swear that he could see the purple wax of the seal.

But then he knew that it couldn't be real. For one thing, the thing that he thought that he saw following them was sagging in the air rather than soaring, as the letters that he'd both magically sent and received always did, no matter how heavy they were, no matter how fast Merlin was racing on horseback, no matter how wet they became. They always zoomed, as he was always proud to see. That had been a difficult trick of magic, even if it seemed so insignificant, to enchant the candle's sealing wax to always find him.

But this phantom sheaf of paper was shuddering and dipping up and down in the air; the purple wax that he thought he saw was beginning to drip down into the air, as though suddenly heated; the individual pieces of parchment separating and drifting apart from one another, thrown about in every direction from the windstream that followed Aithusa's flight. Then, very suddenly, the pieces of parchment that were not there had suddenly crumbled into ashes with a poof of smoke, dark and black and distant, as though the pages had burnt into nothingness without any fire.

That vision had shaken Merlin, and he'd had such a headache that had to be from squinting in that direction that he'd ordered Aithusa to take them down several hours earlier than he'd planned. It was bad enough that Arthur was not himself; if Merlin began to lose track of what they were doing, he wasn't sure if they would ever get where they were going.

Then there was the next day, when he'd been so overcome by shivers that he'd almost had to lash himself to Aithusa, for fear of shaking too violently to maintain his hold on the dragon's back. The weakness in his grip had frightened him terribly, and he suddenly felt pressure on his body from everything that was touching him, his clothes, his boots, the waterskein that he'd taken to tying about his neck, the pack on his back that contained all of his belongings, the hardness of Aithusa's skin below him…it came as almost a relief the next morning, as they had taken to the sky, when he'd found that he couldn't really feel any of his limbs at all.

But all of these ailments were all in his head, he knew. He was thinking as clearly as ever; it was just that his guilt was affecting him, and that was what was affecting his body. It was all in his head, and so what if he'd never heard of guilt manifesting itself thusly before? So what if it had never happened in any of his six years of lying to Arthur about significantly more than a smuggled scroll? It was in his head, surely.

Admittedly, the nosebleed that he'd gotten that evening had not been imaginary, but all in all, he was glad of it. Of course, Aithusa wasn't grateful that Merlin had dripped blood onto the whiteness of his back—he could be as vain as Arthur sometimes, Merlin swore—and after Arthur had gotten a fire going all by himself and Merlin had noticed by the firelight the brown splotched stains on his tunic and neckerchief, he hadn't been particularly pleased with himself. But the nosebleed had done more good than bad, he thought. When Arthur had actually noticed Merlin wavering in front of him on Aithusa's back and seen the blood on his face, he had livened immediately and scrambled forward, despite the height that usually rendered him motionless, and held Merlin still, ordering Aithusa to descend with the authority that had been so lately missing from his voice, and then there was Aithusa actually listening to Arthur…yes, as far as bloody body parts went, that was a good one.

Of course, Arthur had gone right back to being difficult the next morning—this morning, now that Merlin thought about it–even if he was somewhat more alert. Merlin had been optimistic—Arthur had gotten up without complaint and stoked up the fire on his own. For a moment, as he moved closer to the growing flames, Merlin wondered if Arthur was sick. Merlin was shivering under all of the layers of the clothing that he'd brought with him, but he could see Arthur sweating as he tossed more wood onto the fire. But Arthur was moving about energetically and Merlin just figured that Arthur had had a particularly interesting dream that was lingering.

But apparently, rousing himself quickly and stoking the fire was as far as Arthur's generosity went for the day, because it was immediately after they sat down on the forest floor that Arthur proposed taking a day off, saying strangely carefully that they both could use a break. Merlin, who hadn't slept well, argued that neither of them were in any shape to spend the day hiking. He knew, having woken frequently in the night, that Arthur had been upright for a good portion of it, facing the fire that burned between where Arthur had lain his blanket and where Merlin was trying to sleep, eyes wide and watchful. Merlin hadn't understood that, but if neither of them had slept, he said dully, it was better to just get up on the dragon and try not to talk to each other, if their conversation the last time that they'd been sleepless had been any indication.

But Arthur had kept arguing for the day off, although his voice was rather softer than it usually was when they argued. He had even refused to eat more than a mouthful of his breakfast, shoving the rest at Merlin for him to eat. Merlin had obliged as best he could—he hadn't been very hungry for the last few days, which he attributed to the lack of physical activity. But Merlin ate Arthur's breakfast, mostly because, if this was Arthur's way of spiting Merlin for refusing to loaf around and do nothing all day, it was not his most intelligent method.

Besides, Arthur eventually agreed after Merlin threatened to take off and fly on his own, and Arthur could walk if he wanted to. Merlin had been surprised that Arthur had given in so easily-the most that Merlin would have done was to fly out of sight for a few minutes before coming back, just to teach Arthur a lesson. But Arthur had been strangely adamant that Merlin not fly alone, so Merlin had, with a great deal of satisfaction, eaten all of Arthur's breakfast with as much gusto as he could manage.

Of course, Merlin threw it all back up again a few hours later, his stomach heaving suddenly, but Arthur was sitting in front of him on Aithusa's back today, having rather unexpectedly and insistently volunteered to watch for landmarks for the very first time, and he hadn't seen. Aithusa hadn't seemed to notice either, which was fortunate, for he had sided with Arthur on taking the day off. But Merlin was a Dragonlord. Arguments with Aithusa tended to end much more quickly than with Arthur. He wasn't a Kinglord, after all. Unfortunately.

Kinglord…that was funny.

That was funny!

Oh, if only that were a real thing!

Arthur would probably appreciate that.

Kinglord…

Merlin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which shook slightly at the motion, and laughed aloud. He tried to reach forward to tap Arthur on the back, trying to share the joke. He would have shouted for him, for some reason feeling that it was very important that Arthur hear the joke just then, but the wind shear must have been very loud that day, even though Merlin had given in to Arthur's demand that they fly lower that day, because Arthur hadn't heard him any of the times that Merlin had tried to catch his attention in the last few hours, although Merlin could not for the life of him remember why. Arthur had been periodically glancing backward at him for some reason, but he wasn't doing it now. So Merlin resolved to tap him.

Unfortunately, he found that he was having trouble leaning forward to grab at Arthur's shoulder. When had his pack gotten so heavy? He could barely sit up with the weight of it. He must have packed in the wrong order that morning, that would explain it. Bad luck. He really needed Arthur to hear the joke before he forgot it. What was it again?

Merlin put his hand back down on Aithusa's back, trying to steady himself before he made another grab for Arthur. He looked down and noticed for the first time that his hand was all but blending in with Aithusa's skin. That was strange. It was very…what was it?

Kinglord, that's what it was.

No, it wasn't.

That was the joke for Arthur.

Merlin laughed at it again, but his laugh turned into a choke, but that was okay because it made sense. He leant to the side as best he could, momentarily dizzied, and threw up for the second time.

This time, however, Arthur must have heard. He whipped his head around so quickly that Merlin was dimly surprised that he didn't slide right off of Aithusa. Arthur shouldn't have done that, Merlin thought, he shouldn't have looked away. Arthur was supposed to be watching for landmarks, so that they could find where they were going. Arthur was supposed to be helping. Arthur was supposed to be focusing on the ground below them, not on Merlin. He was doing it all wrong.

Merlin opened his mouth to yell at him.

Instead, he said, "Kinglord."

Arthur did not seem to get the joke, because he did not laugh, and Arthur would have laughed if he got it. Merlin wasn't even sure that he had heard what Merlin had said, because instead of answering, Merlin watched placidly as Arthur turned very white very quickly and then began to slide sideways off of Aithusa's back. Merlin opened his mouth to warn him, but all that came out was a laugh. Kinglord. It was funny.

It was only when Arthur spun swiftly and lunged backward, heedless of their position in the sky, arms reaching toward him that Merlin realized that Arthur wasn't actually falling off of the dragon. Which was good.

It was only when Arthur missed in his desperate reach for Merlin that Merlin realized that he was the one who was sliding off of the dragon.

That was funny. Merlin was the last Dragonlord, and he was falling off of a dragon. That was pretty funny. Merlin was pretty sure that he had never heard something so funny. What kind of Dragonlord was he if fell off of a dragon? He'd have to tell his father when he got the chance. Balinor would understand that it was funny. Arthur didn't seem to find it amusing, though. At least, that wasn't the expression that he always wore when he thought something was funny. This was a different expression. It looked familiar.

Merlin opened his mouth to ask Arthur what was wrong.

Instead, he laughed.

And then he fell.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I always love reviews/comments, and they are always very much appreciated.


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